Traffic Bots Against the TOS of LL?

why not spare a prim, so those that care can click for a notecard that details what you are doing to be at the top of search?

If it's nothing to be ashamed of or intended to deceive the customers, why is there such resistance to doing it?

as for searching though 6 pages, I have. There are legit sites, and a good portion of bad ones in the results (keyword bloat, prims in search, bots ,etc... and poor quality content)

Because an educated consumer should be your best customer. Relying on apathy or ignorance probably isn't the wisest business plan.

But why?

It was still a false picture.

If I liken traffic gaming (all types, not just traffic bots) to spamming, I do not equate it literally to the sending of unsolicited bulk electronic messages ( a common definition of spam ). I illustrate it as an abuse of available resources.
Spam is a well-known example of free-loading. Spammers look for an advantage by abusing tools at little cost to themselves.
That's what traffic bots definitely are - freeloaders. They are an abuse of the tools given to us by LL.

Spam is also an example of a type of freeloading that simply does not scale.
Pro-gamers have argued that it is open to everyone to use traffic bots. However it has been pointed out that if everyone actually did that then the sheer numbers of logins necessary could well break the system, in a parallel of the way that the ever-rising volume of spam has impacted on email services.

Paid picks usually has a whopping great sign, otherwise there's no point to it, it doesn't get much more transparent than that.

You have a different version of Internet history than usually given, nor does it match my own memory on early BBS and usenets using Pine (in my case). Spam was generally considered used first as an Internet term in BBS and usegroups for people that sent off-topic, generally commercial emails to a group. In that vein, the first spam message is generally considered to be an email sent by a DEC rep to see their latest product at a tech conference and it was sent on ARPAnet, before the current Internet much less any open use of web browsers. We were clearly using the term when text use (due to very low connection speeds on the two primary backbones) exceeded by far early and primitive web/browser use, if you could call them browsers - back in the days of local bulletin boards and a few like Fidonet and Prodigy (I'm forgetting the big one at the time, maybe Compuserve) were around, using the Telnet backbones. Spam, like the core abbreviations, predates the Internet in many ways and the browsers altogether.

Well said, Sling. There's already a mechanism in place for people to get to the top without earning it. They can pay to be at the top of the classifieds list. People who instead turn to traffic bots are essentially stealing resources from the public commons to get to the top. Freeloaders is an apt description.

To be fair, that's also flawed: a sufficiently large external company can pay for the top classified without their SL business "earning" it in SL. Likewise, a business can irrationally buy the top classified, penalizing rational businesses.

question .. what do picks have to do with traffic ?

Each pick gives an extra link pointing to your location's URL, which increases its ranking on the GSA used for "New Search" (ie, Search All).

Nothing at all.

This is a bots thread, but bots threads usually get to include the other main methods of influencing the search results, because a few people have an axe to grind.

I stand corrected. What I wrote was my understanding of the origin. I was around in the times of BBs but I skipped a few years and the word was already in common use as applied to search engines when I got to the web. What I wrote is what I read, which was obviously wrong.

Now is Picks buying cheating? has got its own thread

/327/8c/280343/1.html

There's a none-too-subtle difference between paying for a classified and using underhand freeloading to increase visibility.
If I look at a Google search result page, the paid-for placements are clearly separated from the main results. I know a lot of people who pay little attention to the paid placements.

So it's OK to abuse something until you are caught.
So it's OK to spam a search engine until they delist you.
Nothing wrong.

How about stealing stuff until you are caught?
Not BIG stealing now - let's not get carried away here - just a little teensy-weensy apple from a supermarket for instance. It's not as if the cost of an apple would ruin them. Fergawdsakes 'shrinkage' is built into their financial planning. That's the way it works.
Is it OK to snarf the very occasional apple if a person doesn't mind the risk of being 'delisted' by security?
Say you only take apples that look a bit damaged or about to start rotting? Why, you're actually saving them the trouble of disposing of the things. I mean, you're actually helping them to maintain an attractive display. They should be paying you!


oooo kaaaay!

No.

Yes.

Don't be ridiculous.

why not?

Hey, Mort. You suggest doing it. I want to know why.

clarity and information for your consumers.

In other words an upfront inworld versus just on the forums.

Can see how being upfront with your customers affects your sales versus random samples of chats with them.

But that isn't something you want to do, because the limited research you did shows your side. So rather than risk finding out it would affect your sales you'll hem and haw and not do it for a month or two to get a good long term idea of the effect on sales.

But customers don't ask for such clarity - there's nothing to clarify. Customers just look around shops to see if they like something enough to buy. And I'm perfectly up front with them. They find exactly what they expect to find after reading the search listings. So why? Do customers normally want to know how shop got its rankings?

[added]
Let me ask you a question. If a traffic bot user put such a notice up, and sales were not affected, would you accept that using traffic bots is ok after all? Would you even believe the bot user?

Because a consumer sometimes bases their purchases on more than seeing an item they want.

I know a good many that don't do business with companies that sent way too much junk mail to their mailboxes. Legit advertising, but annoying. Same with telemarketing calls.

Price, Quality and all play a part in purchases. So does how a company advertises and builds up recognition.

I added a question for you in my previous post.

So you're saying that some of my customers won't buy if they know that I use traffic bots, and you want me to effectively turn them away. Is that right?

If you provide the customer with info explaining the reason the store ranks highly in search, do you really think it would make any difference.

Had I received something like that a month ago, I wound not have understood it, I was unaware what a bot was. I would have been to busy looking for what I wanted to bother reading it in its Entirety.

I imagine a lot of people do have an impartial view of what goes on behind the scenes, bots or whatever else you techno’s get up to. They are just shoppers, on a mission, wanting to get home and decorate their house. They don't care anymore than I care if the shop keeper down the road has filed his taxes.

If they don't care about bots they won't be turned away. What is wrong with educating them to your practices?